Volunteers; Where would our community be without them
Editorial

The month just ended saw several local demonstrations put on by various levels of government, along with other organizations, aimed at expressing gratitude to the many volunteers who help make this community work.

Many of you reading these words are among those who give of your time to make the community better, and let us add our own note of thanks here for the work you do. As has been said so many times, the community would not work without you.

And let us hope these expressions of thanks are contagious, and the sentiments are being felt by others in the community.

Do you have kids, and are they involved in sports? Then it's a volunteers who stands behind the benches of cold hockey arenas, urging your youngsters on and helping them learn the fundamentals. And as the weather gets warmer, it will be volunteers who teach the young athletes the proper way to kick a soccer ball or hold a bat.

Earth Day was late last month, and as usual, it was marked by a number of community clean-ups. These events are organized by volunteers, and it's more volunteers who actually show up and walk along the sides of the roads, etc, picking up the rubbish that others drop. Would anyone care to guess how the place would look if no one stepped up to do the cleaning?

In the last couple of weeks, it was volunteers who were out selling daffodils, trying to raise money to possibly find a cure for cancer.

It's volunteers who make organizations like Hospice run, providing support for people coping with the stress of serious illnesses.

It's volunteers who help out at hospitals and libraries and schools and at a host of other local facilities.

It's volunteers who help deliver food to people who otherwise would have trouble getting out to get it for themselves.

It's volunteers who help run the local food banks.

In our community, volunteers help run the fire service, responding to life-threatening situations, frequently with very little warning.

It's become traditional to take some time in April or May to thank these people for all they do in the community. But the fact is, we should probably be doing it a lot more frequently than just once a year.